


Under the Armor

by hinonekwords



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, POV Alternating, more tags to be added as the story progresses, more-than-canon-typical swearing and sex jokes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-01 15:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8630149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hinonekwords/pseuds/hinonekwords
Summary: What was originally envisioned as a Fairy Tale AU has ballooned out of control and reached your internet as a Cheesy Fantasy Novel Your 10th Grade English Teacher Says Doesn't Count As "Real Reading" AU. Join me on this adequately-written journey into a world full of shapeshifting dragon people, lopsided technological development, and nouns with the word "enchanted" in front of them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last time I wrote fic (an “oh god, really?” number of years ago) I was an angst-absorbing kid, so of course chapter one picks up where I left off by being way more dour than the rest of it. Stick around - there’s funny later!

FN-2187 put his helmet on for the last time.

He paused with his head halfway covered and took a deep breath. It wasn’t that hard to breathe under the helmet, all things considered, but if this was the last time he ever got to take in air that hadn’t first made its way past metal and cloth and leather he was going to savor it.

His fellow stormtroopers geared up as well, probably with much less weighing on their minds as they did so. They'd been called to attend one of Captain Phasma's briefings. If the rumors that were quickly spreading among the others were true, the subject of this briefing would give him the perfect excuse to be outside the fort.

The perfect opportunity to _stay_  outside the fort.

_ This is a bad idea. _

Droplets of water - leftovers from the rain that had passed overhead early that morning - dripped off the awnings above him and trickled down his black visor.

_This is an awful idea. This is the worst idea you've ever had._

He pulled his gloves tighter onto his hands. The leather pressed firm against the spaces between his fingers until they felt like an extra layer of skin.

_They're going to stop you, they're going to catch you, someone's just going to **look**  at you and they'll know what you're up to and they'll tell someone important and someone important will tell someone more important and they'll do something to stop you. You're going to fail. You're going to fail. You're going to fail._

He glanced down at a puddle that had gathered against the wall.

_And even if you do get out, is it worth it?_

His reflection stared back. Eyes lost behind a thin black line, head wrapped inside a metallic white bell.

_Yes._

 

 

 

The small room in which they gathered was, like the rest of the fort, adorned with nothing more than a large banner bearing the First Order's emblem and the eerily precise angles of the corners between its stone walls. The troopers, likewise, lined up in a well-practiced grid and waited in silence for their captain to arrive.

They didn't have to wait long.

Phasma marched in, her black and red cape flowing behind her like a flag in light wind. She towered over each and every one of them - in fact, she was the tallest person FN-2187 could ever remember seeing. The others sometimes whispered to each other that perhaps she was something other than human under her armor. What _else_  she might be was a heated subject of debate at mealtime. FN-2187 preferred to think she was a very tall but nonetheless standard-issue person. It made her more . . . comprehensible.

She turned and stood in front of them.

In front of him, specifically.

_and they'll know what you're up to and they'll tell someone important and_

It was probably a coincidence.

Once she finished looking over the assembled troopers and was satisfied that everyone who was meant to be present was, in fact, present, Phasma spoke.

"A dragon associated with the kingdom of D'Qar was shot down with an enchanted net one hour ago."

If they were being addressed by anyone with any less authority than Phasma, this is where the room would have exploded with murmurings about the validity of certain rumors and the accuracy of certain speculation.

"Due to the distance from which he was shot it is unclear precisely where he landed and our own dragons have been unable to locate him. Your instructions are to go out, find him, and return him here alive."

"Captain?"

Third row back, second from the right. No one dared turn their head to look, but everyone with the right field of vision watched the trooper who spoke up. Interrupting Phasma during a briefing - and no briefing was over until Phasma had explicitly dismissed them - was both officially an act of insubordination and had never, ever happened. The whole room could feel Phasma's gaze shift under her unmoving helmet.

"Do you have a question, VB-718?" The only places a trooper had their designation marked were etched into their armor under the neck or inside their own mind, yet Phasma always knew who was who, even from across the room. Like a hunting dog picking out a scent.

VB-718 straightened her already-model posture. "What should we do if the dragon tries to escape?"

Phasma’s head tilted down a minuscule amount. It was the closest thing to forgiveness FN-2187 had ever seen her express. "The dragon has already been restrained by the net and likely injured by his fall. If at any point he poses a genuine threat of escape, you are permitted to incapacitate him. Anyone who kills the dragon or fails to respond appropriately to an attempted escape will be sent to reconditioning."

_Reconditioning._  The word alone made his stomach churn. He'd never committed any infractions serious enough to go through it himself -

_And you still have a chance not to. You can just go along with this mission. Head out there and come right back. You don't even have to actually look for the dragon, just wait somewhere and come back when everyone else is done. Just stay._

\- but he'd seen what the people who had gone through it looked like afterward. The ones who came out of it best ended up as stripped-down versions of themselves. Quieter, calmer, like whatever rough edge of their personality was responsible for their misbehavior had been sanded away. The ones who came out of it worst turned into a mess. One time FN-2187 had woken up early and seen someone in the bunk two rows down from his frantically scratching her mattress. That sort of behavior was the kind of thing that got people sent to reconditioning _again_. And again. Until it stopped.

He wasn't sure which outcome would be more likely for him.

 

 

 

The briefing ended as orderly as it began, and within a half-hour several dozen stormtroopers were fanning out in a spiral around the fort. FN-2187 looked up and saw a dragon - one of the First Order’s own, so indicated by the symbol burned into the underside of its wing - circling overhead. He knew, logically, that the only thing that dragon would be looking out for was signs of where their target had landed.

He started walking faster.

"Eager to find this guy, Eight-Seven?" To his left he heard Slip. His . . . the closest thing he had to a friend, probably. Close enough that Phasma had to give him the occasional stern reminder not to take it easy on him in practice battles, no matter how tired or injured he was. Reminders that, despite their name, practice battles were just as important as the real ones, where they would be expected to fight until either they or their enemy fell, pain being no excuse for hesitation, neither theirs nor their opponent’s.

FN-2187 walked straight through a thin branch, the bendy sprig scraping against his visor. "Just want to get this over with."

"Sure. That, plus you want to be able to say you got to him first." Nines. Less of a friend, by whatever amount Slip _was_. FN-2187 could almost hear him roll his eyes. "Relax, you're already Phasma's favorite."

Zeroes' turn to speak up. "Phasma doesn't have favorites. She has projects."

"Her favorite project, then."

Any day before this FN-2187 would have stuck close to to his squadmates, if not to defend himself then at least to pretend that the social connections they developed by teasing him were more important than defending himself.

Not today.

He quickened his pace, putting more and more distance between himself and the other troopers, until he had gotten so far from them he could have convinced himself he was all alone in the forest. If he had a less urgent goal, he might have stopped to take a moment and reflect on how this was the first time in years he had been truly isolated.

(Well. Physically.)

As it was, he picked a spot on the horizon and marched towards it.

 

 

 

After some amount of time - it was hard to determine exactly how much when the closest thing to a clock he had handy was counting the trees as he walked past them - FN-2187 idly wondered how far he'd have to stray from base before the spell on his armor took effect.

It might have happened already, if it was triggered by intent instead of proximity. Perhaps he'd sealed himself in like a dead body in a tomb the moment he put his helmet on. He had no idea how it was supposed to feel, or if he was supposed to feel anything at all. It wasn't as if he'd ever met anyone who had personal experience.

Now, he stopped. He took a deep breath and tugged at his helmet.

It was stuck.

Stormtrooper armor, while uniform in overall design, was sized to be a precise fit for each particular trooper. Height measurements were taken once a year and as soon as it was clear a cadet had aged through all their major growth spurts they were issued a new custom set of armor to replace the mismatched pieces they had grown up practicing with. (The exact provenance of those dented helmets and breastplates being something that no trooper liked to spend time thinking about.) With strictly controlled diets and a daily routine that primarily consisted of training, training, a rotation of assorted duties related to the upkeep of the fort, and more training, significant fluctuations in weight were uncommon and swiftly reversed.

To put it simply:

Stormtrooper armor didn't _get_  stuck.

He stepped back and leaned against a tree, the little thing just barely strong enough to not bend under the combined weight of him and his armor. This was it. Trapped in here for the rest of his life.

Whatever amount of life he had left, anyway. He was still in the forest surrounding the fort, and First Order-controlled territory stretched out for miles beyond that, and places the First Order could _reach_  stretched out for miles beyond _that_. He had no clue if they'd go through the trouble of trying to bring a single stormtrooper back, but if they did . . .

And then he had an idea.

Phasma had sent them all out to find a dragon. A dragon who had come from and likely intended to return to somewhere very far away from the fort. A dragon who was currently caught in a net and would, presumably, be grateful to anyone who helped him get out of it (or could at least be forced to admit that he owed them a favor.)

A dragon who could fly faster than FN-2187 could run.

_**This**  is the worst idea you've ever had._


	2. Chapter 2

Poe Dameron lay on top of what was left of a bush.

He opened his eyes, snapping them back shut upon seeing how close they were to a snarl of sharp leaves. In his brief moment of sight he noticed glowing red wires crisscrossed around him. The damn _net_. Explained why he could barely move his arms or legs. He huffed out a few breaths. Nothing. Didn't even feel all that warm. _The damn net._

He slowly twisted his body against the crinkling branches until he felt sure his face was out of reach of anything with a point on it and squinted upward.

The trees above him had some cracked branches that formed a small window to the sky - which Poe would, under more pleasant circumstances, have considered delightful - but nothing that would stand out among similar naturally-occurring gaps to anyone looking from above. The net must have worked fast enough to change him back into human form while he was still in midair. And he’d made the dragon who caught him with it too burnt in the face to see where he’d gone down, if his memory was accurate.

Good news: They had no idea where he was.

Bad news: They were going to look for him.

He heard the sound of twigs snapping under boots to his left. He turned (carefully, carefully, grateful that nothing except his head and hands were exposed to the tough foliage) and saw a figure clad in gleaming white armor approach from between two trees.

Worst news: They had found him.

The stormtrooper knelt down and . . . peered at him? It was so hard to see into their black-shielded visors that Poe sometimes wondered how _they_  were able to see anything.

"Are you the dragon they shot down?"

The noble thing to do would be to say "yes" and face whatever fate was in store for him with dignity. The brave thing to do would be to say nothing and attempt to fight back. The clever thing to do would be to hope this stormtrooper was easily duped, say "no", and fall back on one of the other two plans in case that didn't work.

"You know any other reasons a guy would be tied up all alone in a forest?"

The stormtrooper looked him up and down. "If that net isn't on you, will you be able to fly?"

Poe squinted, more, at the . . . _man_  was a safe enough guess. _Easily duped_  was still on the table, if his questions continued their current trajectory of strangeness. "I had assumed that was the reason it was shot at me in the first place."

The stormtrooper shook his head. "No, no, what I mean is-" He rummaged through the pack strapped around his hips and pulled out a . . . thing. Like a mousetrap with no block of wood to pin the mouse against. "I can take it off you."

Poe's decision to move his eyes away from the leaves had been smart, because they nearly bulged out of his head as soon as he realized what the stormtrooper was saying.

Not a mousetrap. A _key_.

"What . . . how . . . _that?_ "

"Everyone above a certain security clearance gets one of these. I'm not exactly high-ranking-"

"Buddy, if you actually get me out of this thing I will give you any damn ranking you _want_."

The stormtrooper - his _rescuer_ , now - nodded and placed the key against a particularly dense mesh of wires around Poe's elbow. The net sparked. It stung like hell, but that was better, he supposed, than the alternative: it meant his injuries from the fall had been minor, rather than so catastrophically bad they overloaded his ability to feel pain entirely.

The wires sizzled away like water on a hot pan and the stormtrooper helped untangle him from the shattered branches. "Thanks. Though . . ." Poe gingerly plucked at some twigs that had gotten wedged in his clothes and were in danger of shifting into places where twigs were decidedly not welcome. "I expect you aren't setting me free just because you felt like doing some good today."

If it was possible for a stormtrooper to look sheepish, this one was doing a pretty good job of it. "I need someone to get me away from the First Order."

Poe set a hand on the other man's shoulder. Damn, that metal was cold. Didn't hurt that his own body was warming back up now that the net was gone. "Well, I was planning on getting out of here myself, so you're welcome to come along. If you don't mind heights." He winked and gave the stormtrooper a nudge. "Okay, pal, you might want to step back a little."

He took stock of the trees around them - it’d be pretty embarrassing if the first thing he did after this man saved his life was knock his head against one - and coughed.

A few seconds later he was standing on all fours, line of sight twice as high as in his human form, the poor bush now thoroughly crushed under his black claws. Beside him, the stormtrooper stared (presumably? Again, the visor), having pressed himself back against the nearest tree.

"Oh, _wow._ "

Poe chuckled. He imagined the face under that helmet looked a bit like his own when he was little, the first time he saw his mother transform. All wide eyes and held-in breath and a dopey slackjawed smile.

He knew there were dragons in the First Order - he'd blasted his fair share of them right out of the sky - so the response, as adorable as it was, did confuse him a bit. Maybe the stormtroopers didn't see dragons up close very often. Everything about the Order seemed to be so impersonal. It wouldn't surprise him if stormtroopers and dragons and whatever other sorts of soldiers they had never interacted with each other, united only by the flag they fought under rather than by any sense of camaraderie.

Or maybe this guy just thought Poe looked badass. Both explanations were valid.

“Everything seems good. Nothing hurts so much I can’t fly with it.” He stretched his wings out as far as he could, which wasn’t much, since being this much bigger made the forest that much denser. “Now let’s find a way out of here before someone-”

“ _Stop!_ ”

“ . . . finds us.” Poe really needed to stop saying things. Or thinking things. It always had the incredible effect of bringing him the opposite of what he wanted. He turned and saw another stormtrooper step towards them with shaking hands. “Don’t suppose you’re here to help me too, are you?”

New Stormtrooper’s hand steadied just enough to grab a blaster from its holster and aim directly at one of Poe’s legs.

“Guess not.”

Friendly Stormtrooper raised his own blaster and sent the other one tumbling backwards with a single bolt. Poe winced at the sight. Those things packed a hell of a punch for something so small.

"Any more I should know about?"

"Flying? Now?"

"Right, right." Poe crouched low to the ground. "Climb on. Arms around my neck." The stormtrooper did so. "Okay, now I need to find a clearing."

Voices behind them. Shouting. Stomping.

"We don't have time to find a clearing!"

"Good point." Poe rose back up and, with less warning than the man gripping his neck probably would have appreciated, blasted the trees above them. His passenger yelped out a word Poe didn't recognize - he supposed it wasn't too much of a stretch for the First Order to have their own forms of profanity. "Hold tight and keep your head down!"

They burst through the burnt branches, flying free for perhaps half a minute before Poe heard wings flapping behind them. In most situations he’d be able to take them out in one go, but having someone with a semi-secure hold on his back put a serious damper on his more complicated maneuvers. This was going to be a challenge.

Poe kind of liked challenges.

“First priority is to take out those dragons as fast as we can, but that means turning around. Our best shot at hitting ‘em is if I’m facing them head-on, and I don’t want to risk dislodging you by blasting over my shoulder.”

“I appreciate that.”

He probably _didn’t_  appreciate the blast that shot past them barely a foot away from his head. It was certainly too close for Poe’s comfort.

“Give me a sense of what we’re up against. Look back real quick - how many are there? Higher or lower than us?”

He felt the stormtrooper shift behind him for a moment, then return. “Three. Sort of a V shape. Bottom one’s about level with us, all the same distance back.”

Poe laid an image out in his mind. “How’s your grip? You secure back there?”

“As secure as I can be.”

“Good. Keep it up, this is gonna get wild for a second.”

The stormtrooper muttered something that sounded a lot like that swear word again.

Poe pushed forward - more distance meant his blasts would be weaker by the time they reached the other dragons, but getting too close would give the third too good a shot at hitting them, and momentum alone wouldn’t make up for the amount of hang time they were about to have.

Another blast, not as close as the first one, but still a clear indication that the three behind them were in no mood to get tired out and fly away on their own.

“What’s the angle on that V like?”

“Pretty narrow.”

“Perfect.” He let out a test breath, glad to find that whatever dampening effect the net previously had on him had fully worn off. “Hang on!”

He felt the stormtrooper’s arms squeeze tighter around his neck as he readied a proper blast. He flew up and turned at an angle, smiling inwardly as their pursuers started converging towards him in response. Once they’d lined up right he took a moment to throw himself back in the other direction then tucked his wings in, opened his mouth, and let gravity take care of the rest.

His blast didn’t last long enough to knock out the second dragon. But then, it didn’t need to - the first dragon, having received the brunt of Poe’s fire, did that. It spun back and crashed into the other, both of them falling to the forest below in a screeching tangle.

Poe spread his wings back out with enough time to spare to save himself from a similar fate. The third dragon stayed high, sending down a series of short scattered blasts in retaliation. The trick now was to figure out how to finish it off. Something like the gravity gambit was unlikely to fool it twice, and most of his other finish-the-job-and-get-the-hell-out-of-here-fast plans wouldn’t work unless he wanted his new friend to either get thrown off or grip his neck so tight he choked.

Miraculously, said new friend seemed to be coming up with his own plan. Poe could feel his fingers tapping against the rough scales on his neck. “The last one’s above us now, looks like it’s trying to come at us from an angle. Can you roll to your right?”

“Why, you got a favorite side to fall to your death on?”

“Not all the way, just,” one of the stormtrooper’s arms left his neck for a moment, the other squeezing tighter, “90 degrees? A little less than that?”

The arm returned, but not quite holding on to him. Something was in the stormtrooper’s hand. “You got an idea?”

“I got an idea.” A blaster, the side pressed cold against Poe’s neck. “But we have to be fast.”

“I can be fast.” Poe watched the other dragon pick up speed as it drifted closer. If he understood this “idea” as well as he thought he did . . . “Say when.”

Closer . . . closer . . . Poe could see its _teeth_ , how much longer was he supposed to-

“Now!”

He spun and the stormtrooper fired, landing a shot square in the other dragon’s eye. It screeched and backed off, not enough to get away from, but enough for Poe to take advantage of the new angle and blast the rest of its face square-on. He righted himself as it fell, taking an entire tree down with it.

They flew in silence for a moment, checking to see if that really was the last one. As soon as Poe was confident they had gotten clear-

“ _Holy shit!_  That was awesome!”

“Did we seriously-” The stormtrooper sounded somewhere halfway between scared and exhilarated. “ _Did we seriously just do that?_ ”

“We seriously just did that! Teamwork!” Poe got about a fifth of the way through a loop before remembering that the person holding on to him _probably_  wouldn’t enjoy it as much as he did. The stormtrooper-- No. Fuck that. This guy had already saved his life at least two-and-a-half times. “Hey, what’s your name?”

“FN-2187!”

"F . . . N . . . _what?_ " There's no way he'd heard that right. Most of that was _numbers_. 

"It's the only name they ever gave me!"

Confusion turned into outrage as Poe processed two pieces of information:

  1. Stormtroopers only had whatever names the First Order gave them.
  2. The First Order _didn't give them names._



As if he didn't have enough reasons to hate them. "I can't call you that! Look, you're ditching the First Order, right? Perfect time to pick a new name for yourself. Anything you want."

Poe couldn't tell if his new friend's voice was being muffled by his helmet, overpowered by the wind, or if he'd simply gone quiet. "I don't know any I’d want to use."

Hell. How closed-off did they keep these people? "Then we'll make one, how about that? F-N, F-N . . . _Finn!_ " Okay, maybe this wasn’t an art he’d perfected. Still an improvement. "We can use Finn until you decide on something better, is that okay?"

"Finn. Yeah. Yeah!" Poe's mood brightened right along with _Finn's_  voice. “What about you? What’s your name?”

“Poe! Poe Dameron.”

They continued in relative silence from then on, broken up every now and then by Poe asking Finn questions about what it was like inside the First Order. Not to _pry_ , of course. He gave him plenty of outs when it was clear Finn didn’t want to discuss a certain topic. It was just that, well, a person didn’t get a chance to talk one-on-one to a stormtrooper very often. Certainly not a _cooperative_  one.

From the sound of it, Finn had been something special, to the degree that stormtroopers were ever allowed to be. Not enough to have a say in any decision-making - _not even about his own life_ , an indignant corner of Poe’s mind growled - but enough that, had he stuck around much longer, his captain would probably have recommended him to go up the same line of promotions that she had.

Poe couldn’t help smiling at that. He hadn’t only helped rescue somebody from the First Order. He got the _best_  one.

He’d been going a bit slower than he usually did to accommodate his passenger, but once he reached familiar territory he was able to fly a straight line home. Flat plains and tidy forests gave way to rocky jungle, wild and dense save for one large path that had been cut away centuries ago and (mostly) maintained in the years since.

“You see the castle up ahead there? Doesn’t look like much now, but when we get closer it’s pretty spectacular.”

"Actually, uh . . ." He felt a helmet bump against the back of his neck as Finn ducked his head down. "I haven't opened my eyes since all the fighting stopped."

Poe did his absolute best to hold in a laugh. "Tell you what, if you don't mind taking a little longer to get there, I can land and we'll walk the rest of the way."

"That would be great."

 

 

 

He was back to his human form by the time Finn managed to regain his balance. He pointed ahead as they started walking towards the castle, currently a jagged lump on the horizon.

"From this distance we can get there before dark, no problem." He stretched out muscles that had gotten sore from hours of flying - and, frankly, from hours of carrying an entire person plus armor. The smart thing would have been to unload the suit _before_  hitting the air, though there admittedly hadn't been much time to do so.

Now, however . . .

"Hey, you want to get rid of that helmet? I wouldn't mind looking the guy who saved me in the eyes." He pointed to Finn's visor for emphasis.

"I can't take it off."

"Sure you can." He braced his hands on his hips and leaned back, frowning at the slight popping sensation that rippled up his spine as he did so. Okay, so maybe it wasn't only carrying a load that had worn him out. Not being in his twenties anymore might, possibly, potentially have something to do with it. "You're your own man now. Starting today you don't have to wear any of that stuff."

"No, I mean I _can't_." Finn raised his hand and tugged at his black leather glove. Poe stepped closer. The glove clearly wasn't attached to anything. It wasn't sewn into his shirtsleeve or fastened to the metal plate over his wrist, and near as Poe could tell wasn't fused to the man's skin, yet no matter how hard Finn pulled it refused to slide off his hand by any perceptible amount.

Poe was starting to get that "fuck the First Order and everything they stand for" feeling again.

Finn's hands dropped back to his sides. "There's a spell on the armor. Leave the area surrounding the fort without permission and you're stuck inside it." He said it so simply, as if he'd just told Poe that clouds and thunder were often accompanied by rain. "Extra measures to discourage troopers from running away. Not a lot try, and most of the ones who do get caught, but . . ."

". . . if you do get away, they want to make sure you're miserable."

"Basically." Finn kept his head turned down to the ground. Poe wondered if that was _only_  so he could watch out for bumpy terrain.

"Well, lucky for you, we happen to have a wizard or two of our own at the castle. I'm not an expert, but I know you can't make a spell permanent without there being some way to break it. Like a code word or a . . . a magic tree or something." Still studying his own boots. Poe sped up a bit to step in front of him and lean into his field of vision. "Hey. You can guess as well as I can what might've happened to me if you didn't let me out of that net. I owe you. So I promise, whatever it takes to get you out of there, I'll do anything I can to help."

Some sort of sharp sound echoed under Finn's helmet. Was that a _laugh?_

"I mean it. Come on." He looped an arm around the other man's shoulder and helped him navigate a particularly uneven outcropping. "The sooner we get there, the sooner we can crack that thing open."


	3. Chapter 3

Poe's estimation of how long it would take to reach the castle wasn't too far off. The sun had just dipped under the horizon by the time they reached the gates, casting everything in a dim light punctuated by the golden glow of lanterns.

A man standing watch in a tower leaned over the wall. “Poe! Is that you?”

“Aw, you don’t recognize me? What happened to that great eyesight while I was gone?”

“I recognize you fine, I just don’t remember the last time I saw you walk up to this wall instead of flying right over it!” He noticed Finn and went still. Even from so far below, Finn could see his eyebrows scrunch together. “Uh . . . is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine, Iolo.” Poe flashed Finn an apologetic smile. “Can you give the General a heads-up that I’m back? It’s gonna be a pretty long debriefing.”

Iolo’s shoulders slumped back down, though he was still craning his neck a bit further than was strictly necessary. “ . . . Am I allowed to ask a question first?”

“Only if you think I’ll be able to answer it in under a minute.”

He stared at them a little more, then nodded. “I’ll go tell her you’re here.”

Finn took in his new surroundings as Poe led him through the gates. The fort he’d just escaped from was barely older than he was. This, in contrast, was clearly centuries old, with vines and roots from the surrounding plants that seemed to be tangled inside the brickwork as much as creeping over it. Though it didn’t escape his notice that many of the structures surrounding the central building were much, much newer.

_He_  didn’t escape anyone _else’s_  notice, either. Pair of eyes after pair of eyes locked onto him as he and Poe made their way across the grounds. This was undoubtedly the closest anyone in this castle had ever been to a stormtrooper who wasn’t currently shooting at them. He must have looked like the world’s most pathetic prisoner of war, walking out in the open with his hands unbound and a single unarmed escort at his side.

Thankfully, this escort caught on to people staring almost as quickly as Finn did, and quietly pulled him to a narrow corridor where they were sufficiently obscured by shadows and moss-covered columns.

“Sorry,” he said, lamplight giving Finn a momentary view of him mid-wince. “People are nice here, mostly, it’s just . . .”

“ _They’re_  not used to seeing you walk through here either.”

Poe laughed. “It’s a rare occurrence, for sure.” He pointed to an entryway leading deeper into the castle. “This way.”

They had taken barely a dozen steps into the hallway when something shot towards them. For a split second Finn thought it might be blaster fire, but it was too quiet, too close to the ground, and rather than a single bolt of energy it consisted of a mass of glowing dots. Most importantly, Poe didn’t seem worried about it. He looked quite happy to see it, in fact.

“Hey, Bee!” Poe stooped down, holding a hand out for the little orange lights to swarm over. “Didja miss me, buddy?”

Finn stepped aside. “What is that stuff?”

"We call it dragon dust." Poe wiggled his fingers, to which the dust responded by bouncing up and down, then stood to face Finn. "You saw all those particles that puffed out when I changed?"

"Yeah." A person suddenly being on fire and then just as suddenly _not_  being on fire was kind of hard to miss.

"Well, most of it fades away after a few seconds, but every now and then a speck will stick around. Put enough of them together and you get something like Bee here."

Finn looked down at the sparks spinning around Poe's ankles. There were so many of them that when they swirled just the right way they formed a globe, points so close together he could barely see through them. “Is it . . . alive?”

“That is a surprisingly difficult question to answer,” Poe said. He turned and Bee followed, once, twice, and again, until they were slowly circling each other like some sort of dance. “I like to think it is, though.”

They continued down the halls with their new companion, Poe nodding amicably at every person who passed (and, more often than not, stared at) them. After some turns and a bit of stair-climbing they reached one end of a long passageway, an impressive pair of doors at the other. As they made their way closer Finn was suddenly struck by the awareness of who was most likely on the other side of them. Which made him aware of how he’d gotten here, and where he’d been before, and how fast it was possible for air to enter and exit his lungs.

He had assumed his helmet was dampening any sound quieter than well-projected speech, but maybe its effect wasn’t really that severe - or maybe his breathing had just gotten _that_  loud - because Poe slowed down and set a hand on his arm. “Hey, you okay?”

“Yes?” Poe stopped completely and frowned. “No.” Finn shook his head. “Queen Organa’s in there, isn’t she? I’m a _stormtrooper_  and I’m about to meet the _queen of D’Qar_.”

“General Organa,” Poe corrected. “As long as the First Order remains a concern, she’s the General.” He must have been two-for-two at guessing Finn’s expression through his helmet, because he followed it up with a shrug.  “Her words.”

“None of that makes the situation any less intimidating.”

“Don’t worry. If she can put up with me, she’ll like you just fine.”

With that, he stepped forward and knocked on one of the doors. It opened and a man stepped through - thin, bald, and with clothes so bright yellow Finn was grateful they were lit by lanterns and not blinding sunlight.

“Master Dameron! It’s so good to see you back.”

“Good to be back, Threepio. Is the General ready to see us?

“Yes, sir.” The man glanced at Finn. If his eyes didn’t widen any at the sight of him, it may have because they were so open to begin with. “Right this way.” He held the door open. Finn took a deep breath and followed Poe through.

There she was, standing at the near end of a table that appeared to be older than every person now in the room put together. Queen/General Leia Organa. The woman who, according to the speeches he’d heard since he was old enough to stand still for them, was at least partly responsible for a number of the world’s current problems. Finn wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Someone taller, maybe. That was the trend for powerful people in his experience. But General Organa was a very small woman. And yet Finn could tell with one look that the authority she had was _earned_  as much as granted to her by her lineage.

She looked right at him, as if coming face-to-face with a stormtrooper was something that happened to her on a regular basis. It probably had been, he considered, at some earlier stage of her life. “This must be the ‘guest’ Iolo mentioned.” She shook her head at Poe. “You do manage to surprise me every time I send you out, don’t you?”

“You’d probably _stop_  sending me out if I didn’t.” He held his hands behind his back and nodded to indicate the man beside him. “General, this is Finn.”

 

 

 

It only took a few minutes for Poe to properly introduce Finn, describing the events just prior to their meeting and then a summary of their escape. Mild exasperation worked its way onto the General’s face when she heard about the stunts they pulled to get away from the First Order’s dragons. Her expression softened, however, when she learned the reason why Finn was still in his armor. 

“I’ll have my brother see if there’s anything he can do to break your spell.”

“You don’t have to do that just for me, ma’am.”

“I would do it ‘just’ for anyone, Finn. Nobody should have to go through that. And nobody should even consider putting someone through it.” Her gaze drifted away for a moment. “My brother and his apprentice should be back in a few days. I can’t promise he’ll be able to get you out, but if there’s anyone who can, it’s him. In the meantime, we can eat least offer you a place to stay.”

“You’d really let me stay here?” He hadn’t expected to be thrown out into the wilderness, but surely some of the people they’d walked past earlier would have second thoughts about sleeping under the same roof as a stormtrooper. And he wouldn’t entirely blame them.

“Of course. Poe has earned his reputation as a good judge of character.” Poe straightened at this, a slight smile pulling at his lips. “If he trusts you to get him to safety, I can trust you in this castle. Though you do understand it might be a while before you’re invited to the more sensitive discussions around here.”

“I understand.” He honestly wasn’t sure how many of those discussions he even wanted to be included in. His top priority had been to get away from the First Order alive. Having accomplished that there wasn’t much he felt necessary to do, aside from getting out of his armor if possible. Finn’s whole life up to today had been about serving some kind of purpose. Now? He didn’t want to be useful, he didn’t want to be important, he just wanted to . . . _be_.

General Organa turned to the man in gold. “Threepio, please take him to a spare room he can spend the night in.”

“Right away, General.” He opened the door and ushered Finn through, leading him down yet another hallway. After spending such a large part of his life in the same fort, it was going to take him some time to get used to navigating any other layout.

“Must be one of the weirdest things you’ve ever had to do, huh? Find a bed for a stormtrooper?”

“It is certainly out of the ordinary, sir, though I must admit if I were asked to catalog all of the unusual events of my life there are many that would rank higher. Why, even if such a list were limited to incidents involving beds, it would have to come in second or even third place, after-”

This was the point where Finn shut him out. The only bed-related “incident” he wanted to hear about right now was the one that ended in him falling asleep on one. Threepio continued gabbling as he checked doors along the hall, finally stopping in order to apologize to someone who had been behind one. As profuse an apology as it was, Finn wasn’t sure he wanted to know what he’d interrupted.

“It occurs to me to ask, sir - do you want to stop by the kitchen on the way to your room? It wouldn’t be too late to have one of the cooks put together an extra plate for you.”

“No, I’m fine. I just want to get some sleep.”

“Perfectly understandable, sir. It does sound like you’ve had a rather exciting day.” He went back to his task of jiggling doorknobs and frowning at them. “I must say, as glad as I am that you and Commander Dameron made it here safely, it is terribly inconvenient to have to find suitable accommodations on so little notice.”

_Commander_  Dameron. No wonder they’d been instructed to capture him alive. “I’m sure the next time somebody brings a stormtrooper home they’ll give you a full day’s warning.”

“That would be very helpful.” He poked his head in one room and, after a brief examination, stepped back and held the door open. “This should do for now. It’s a bit small for a guest room, though I don’t think you’ll be needing much space to keep your personal belongings.” A fair assumption, given that troopers never had anything that was specifically _theirs_ , and the closest thing to it was currently locked around Finn’s body.

Finn stepped through the doorway and took it all in. By the standards of a castle like this it probably wasn’t much - there were multiple storage rooms back at his fort of roughly the same size - but compared to his previous sleeping arrangements it was almost luxurious. The mattress on the bed was at least four times as thick as the thin slabs of padding they had in the First Order’s barracks, and the blankets looked at least twice as warm. There was an armchair in one corner, a dresser in another, and a window set into one wall overlooking some sort of garden, all in a room meant for just one person. Finn would be shocked if Phasma’s quarters were this cozy.

“Will this be suitable, sir?”

“Very.” He gave Threepio a quick nod. “Thank you.” Threepio bowed slightly before stepping out and closing the door behind him, leaving Finn alone to think about the day’s events and his new place in the world.

For about ten seconds. Then he just flopped on the bed.

He shifted back and forth, trying to find a way to lie down that would be remotely comfortable in his armor. He usually slept on one side or the other, but it quickly became apparent that he wouldn’t be able to do that without his arm going numb enough to be in danger of falling off.

Maybe sleeping face-up would be easier. Back flat against the mattress, head resting on a pillow, arms and legs perfectly symmetric-

This was not working.

He pushed himself up and looked at all the pillows at the head of the bed. There were a lot more than what he was used to being provided with (“one” was a very easy number to improve upon), and if he added the two smaller ones sitting in that ludicrously plush chair in the corner, and folded up all those blankets that weren’t going to be of any use to him through his armor anyway . . .

Five minutes later he had built himself a structure, of sorts. It looked absurd to have all the bedclothes piled in the center of the mattress, and he probably looked even more absurd lying down on top of it. But he’d been able to engineer something that propped his body up in a more-or-less comfortable sleeping position. That counted as a victory.

 

 

 

The next morning, Finn discovered a “bonus” of his armor: It weighed him down enough that he hadn’t tossed and turned much in the middle of the night. His pile of blankets and pillows was intact, and as a result he woke up a lot less sore-limbed than he might have otherwise.

He pushed himself out of bed and started putting everything back into place straight away. The First Order had been very strict about stormtroopers keeping their small sleeping spaces tidy. Having an unkempt bed wasn’t a punishable offense in and of itself, but leaving a mess multiple days in a row was the sort of thing that got you _watched_  by people you didn’t want to be watched by. Even if things were less restrictive out here, the discovery that he was lumping all his sheets together so he could sleep on top of them was bound to make him the object of unwanted attention.

_And it’s not like I’ll need any help with **that**_ , he thought, as the metal around his arm clunked against a bedpost.

He’d just gotten the little pillows back onto their chair when he heard a knock at the door. It opened a moment later, Poe standing in the doorway with Bee curled around his ankles. He was wearing different clothes than yesterday - well, of _course_  he was, though since the dress code around here was much less strict the difference was more obvious than Finn was used to.

Also more obvious than Finn was used to: The amount of skin showing out from the low neck of Poe’s shirt. He’d seen naked people before, sure. The lack of privacy among stormtroopers made it impossible to avoid seeing people in various states of undress on a regular basis. But the specific experience of glimpsing light brown skin underneath loose fabric was . . . new.

Poe was saying something. Finn should probably listen.

“-sleep well?”

“Yeah. Yeah, the bed’s comfortable,” he assumed.

“Great. I can show you where the dining room is. Threepio said you didn’t have dinner last night, you must be pretty hungry.”

“I’m not, actually.”

“No? I was with you nearly all day and I didn’t see you eat anything.” Poe frowned and scratched his chin. “Are you feeling okay?”

“I feel . . . fine. I feel fine.” Which made him feel _sick_ , though not quite the kind Poe was worried about. The last time he’d eaten was breakfast the previous morning. Serving size was the only aspect of stormtrooper meals that could remotely be recommended, but they still weren’t large enough to last a full day on their own. Finn knew what morning hunger felt like. It wasn’t this. “I think it’s something in the spell.”

Realization slowly dawned on Poe’s face, and Finn was grateful his expression managed to stop short of pity. “Well, speak up if anything changes. Your head’s not completely closed off, is it?”

“No. There’s a bit of a gap.”

“Mm.” Poe ducked his head and squinted at the space where Finn’s helmet swallowed up the high collar of his shirt. “We could probably get some bread up there.” He straightened up. “Meanwhile, I’ll grab something fast and use that spare breakfast time to give you a tour. If you’re going to be spending any amount of time here, you ought to know the basics of what’s where.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I don’t,” he admitted. “But I’d like to.” He gave a little shrug and an even littler smile. 

How the hell was Finn supposed to say no to that? “Okay. Sure, show me what you’ve got here.”

Poe’s little smile turned into a big one. “Can do. Just a real quick-” he mimed taking a bite out of something- “and a-” and taking a drink out of a cup- “and we’re off.”

 

 

 

Sufficiently fueled for the morning, Poe led Finn from one part of the castle to another, pausing every so often to explain the history behind certain rooms or paintings or damages and imperfections of the building itself. Finn was honestly less astounded by most of the stories than by the idea that any of it had a story at all. Even taking their relative ages into account, there was nothing at the fort that had any significance beyond “this is where we put these things” and “this is where this happens”. He couldn’t imagine someone talking about anything he’d done a hundred years after the fact.

Somewhere along the way Bee got the idea into its head - whichever one of those little lights counted as its “head”, anyway - that _it_  was the one in charge of their tour. Finn and Poe decided to oblige it, even though its itinerary made a lot less sense, including a stain on a rug that it refused to let them leave until they decided the blurry shape resembled a cat.

It led them down one hallway and another, stopping in front of one door and twirling as Poe laughed and reached for the handle.

The room was twice as large as the one Finn had spent the night in, one wall occupied mostly by a row of windows with a small table and two more of those bizarrely soft chairs in front of them. Nearly every inch of wall that wasn’t occupied by door or window was covered by shelves packed full with books, scrolls, and folded-up maps.

“Of course you brought us here.” Poe smiled at Bee, then Finn. “If you ever wanna get this thing on your good side, just grab a book and start reading it out loud. Doesn’t matter what it’s about or if you’ve read it a hundred times before, Bee will be _mesmerized_.”

Finn was feeling a little mesmerized himself. “This is more books than I’ve ever seen in one place.”

“Yeah? I guess it is pretty impressive.” Poe surveyed the room. “What’s the most books you’ve ever seen in one place?”

Finn held a hand over a shelf and stretched his thumb and forefinger across the span of a half-dozen volumes. Poe “oof”ed in sympathy. “I’m not even gonna ask how limited the subject matter was.”

“Probably worse than you’re imagining.”

Bee, apparently bored with the amount of not-being-read-aloud-to going on, flurried around Poe’s ankles and back out the door. Poe shrugged and sauntered after it.

“Not so fast! Some of us have bodies weighing us down!” He followed the swirl of lights around a corner. “Oh! Morning, Chewie.” He held out a hand and beckoned Finn over. “Hey Finn, c’mon, you should meet Chewbacca.”

Finn looked over the library one more time and hesitantly followed Poe’s lead. He didn’t know how many new people he wanted to meet, not while he was still like _this_ , but he supposed it was inevitable. And Poe seemed like the type to cut him a break if things weren’t going well. “Chewie” was probably one of his fellow dragons, or maybe another person who helped run the-

Finn turned the corner and froze.

Standing there, in the middle of the hallway, was a bear.

Not a metaphorical bear, the way people sometimes describe men who've passed a certain threshold of combined heft and hairiness.

_A bear._

"That's a bear." Finn stepped back and pointed, just in case it wasn’t clear that he was referring to the giant creature covered in fur. "Poe, that's a _bear_."

Poe nodded. "Chewie's an _enchanted_  bear. He's very well-behaved." He considered for a moment. "He's very well-behaved by bear standards. And he talks!" He held out an arm out in front of them. Judging by the angle at which he stood, Finn reasoned that Poe's other hand must be planted somewhere along the armor on his back.

Finn was being formally presented. To a bear.

"Chewbacca, this is Finn. Don't mind the stormtrooper outfit, he's a great guy."

Chewbacca raised a paw - complete with claws that were each at least as long as Finn's pinky finger - and let out a rumbling sound that resembled neither any words Finn knew nor what he imagined any other actual language would sound like. He took advantage of the helmet covering his face and used what little peripheral vision he had to check Poe's reaction to all this. Not much. If this was some kind of prank he was doing an excellent job of playing it straight.

Finn reached out and shook Chewbacca's hand, which ultimately consisted of pressing his own hand against the bear's palm and letting it _be_  shook. "It's very nice to meet you, sir."

“Who’s meeting who?”

Finn turned around (in spite of every nerve in his body screaming _don’t turn your back on a bear that thing could fit your whole hand in its mouth_ ) to see a man with grey hair and a leather coat squinting at them with his arms crossed. White lights floated around him - dust like Poe’s, Finn realized, though his seemed more inclined to stay clumped together in one distinct ball.

“You must be the . . .” The man looked at Poe. “How’d you describe him?”

Poe coughed and tapped his foot. “The, uh, very brave man who helped me.”

“Sure. That was it.” He rolled his eyes and extended a hand for Finn. “Either way, if I can believe _anything_  that comes out of this guy’s mouth, that was a pretty wild stunt you pulled to get him out of trouble.”

“Thanks. Uh . . .”

“Call me Han.”

The hand shaking his suddenly became _almost_  as scary as the bear paw. “Han Solo? _The_  Han Solo?”

“Only one I’ve ever met. You telling me they talk about me in the First Order?”

“You get mentioned.”

Han snorted. “Hope it’s nothing flattering.”

“It isn’t.”

Han laughed and released his hand. “Come on, Chewie, let’s leave these kids to their getting acquainted.” Chewbacca grunted and followed him away.

Finn sighed and leaned back against the wall as he watched several hundred pounds of bear disappear down the hall. “Is this part of my schedule now? Meeting one new enemy of the Empire a day?”

“ _Wellll,_ ” Poe hummed, chewing on his lip, “remember that wizard brother the General mentioned . . . ?”


End file.
